There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
The second-longest government shutdown in U.S. history has millions of Americans worried about how they’re going to feed their families. Senators returned to Capitol Hill on Monday, but so far, there are no signs of a truce.
Funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, is set to run dry on Saturday, cutting off food assistance for some 42 million Americans enrolled in the program. That’s more than 12 percent of the U.S. population.
As the deadline approaches, food pantries are seeing a surge in demand.
Beth White of the Central Christian Church Food Pantry in downtown Indianapolis said, “We usually serve between 45 and 50 households, which is about 200 people. Today, we’re at number 76, and we’re still receiving people.”
In Arizona, resident Sherry Wood argued, “There’s no reason why the strongest country in the world, as we claim, is letting our people starve.”
The Department of Agriculture, which oversees SNAP, appeared willing to use emergency funds as a short-term solution, but then backtracked saying Congress would have to take action.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) explained, “There has to be a pre-existing appropriation for the contingency fund to be used.”
Among those stepping in to help is Operation Blessing’s Hunger Strike Force.
David Edson of the Hunger Relief Program said, “We’re ramping up to respond to this and putting meal kits together, and every dollar donated to Operation Blessing is something we’re able to exponentially multiply because of the network of food manufacturers and partners that we have across the United States.”
Edson says people can also help by giving to their local food banks.
“In your local communities, you can work directly with food pantries. So if you are a home gardener and you have an excess of fruits or vegetables, please take those to your local food pantry. If you have backyard chickens that have more eggs than you know what to do with, please take those to your local food pantries,” he said.
“Volunteering is a big thing because a lot of these places are going to be overwhelmed with need, and they’re going to need more people to help console, comfort, and serve these families. So volunteering is another great avenue to do that,” Edson continued.
Unless a political resolution is found in just a few days, millions of Americans could go hungry.
But some leaders are vowing to find a way to prevent that. Virginia’s Governor Youngkin has declared a state of emergency saying he will use funds from a state surplus to keep SNAP funded in Virginia.
Why is demand at food banks all over the country higher than it has ever been before? The media keeps insisting that economic conditions are just fine, but it has become quite obvious to everyone that this is not true. In particular, the rising cost of living has been absolutely crushing households from coast to coast. In the old days, most of the people that would show up at food banks were unemployed. But now food banks are serving large numbers of people that actually do have jobs but that don’t make enough to pay for all of the basics. The ranks of the “working poor” are growing very rapidly, and this is creating an unprecedented crisis all over America.
Perhaps you think that I am exaggerating.
Let me share some specific examples that will prove that I am not.
A new report shows the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank saw its highest need on record this past year. It comes as we mark Hunger Action Month across the country.
Toi Payne of Pittsburgh’s Allentown neighborhood gets emotional thinking about how the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank in Duquesne and other local pantries have been lifesavers for her for the past 30 years.
“We need these places,” Payne said. “Without the food banks, I think a lot of people would be struggling even more, you know, and it helps like the elderly and people like me that’s on disability.”
North Valley Food Bank in Whitefish served 613 families a Thanksgiving meal – a record high.
They anticipate more than 1,000 food bank customers for their Christmas holiday distribution on December 18-19.
“Year round here we’re feeding over a 1,000 of our neighbors every week and the need goes up during the holiday season,” said North Valley Food Bank Director of Development Mandy Gerth.
This holiday season, food banks say they’re facing greater need than ever before. In Silicon Valley, they say 1 in 6 people are coming in for food assistance. In San Francisco, that number is 1 in 5. But the organizations say donations are not keeping up with demand.
For all the food banks, December is a big month. Both in terms of need, and in terms of fundraising. And they say what happens now will impact the entire year ahead.
In some parts of the nation, food banks are absolutely shattering all of the old records.
At one location in New Jersey, demand has actually “quadrupled” since the peak of the pandemic…
Food banks across the Garden State are struggling to keep up with rising demand that may soon outpace donations. At the Salvation Army’s Kroc Community Center in Camden, requests for services have quadrupled since the height of the pandemic, according to a spokesperson.
They keep telling us that everything is fine.
They keep telling us that there is no reason to be concerned.
But in some areas of the country demand at food banks is now four times higher than it was during the worst moments of the pandemic.
Wake up.
They aren’t telling you the truth.
In St. Louis, some people actually had to wait in line for eight hours just to receive a free Thanksgiving meal…
That high demand is felt all over the state. In St. Louis, people waited eight hours to get a free Thanksgiving meal from the Urban League.
The rising cost of living, particularly in housing and groceries, is pushing more families in Washington state to seek assistance from food banks.
According to Robert Ojeda of Food Lifeline, the largest hunger relief organization in the state, food insecurity affects about 25% of Washingtonians, meaning one in four residents is struggling to access enough food.
Ojeda said, “The percentage of food insecurity in Washington state is about 25%, so 1 in 4 Washingtonians are experiencing food insecurity.”
And the largest network of food banks in the state of Washington is reporting that overall demand has nearly doubled since the pandemic began…
Before the pandemic, Food Lifeline served about 800,000 people annually.
During the pandemic, that number rose to 1.1 million and has continued increasing, reaching 1.5 million in 2023 and 1.7 million in 2024, Coleman said.
Hunger in America is getting progressively worse.
Poverty in America is getting progressively worse.
Economic pain in America is getting progressively worse.
Young Wall Street bankers working 90 hours a week are snorting lines of Adderall at their desks in a new office drug culture.
While cocaine was once the drug of choice, bankers are now reportedly turning to the ADHD medication for work days that can last as long as 22 hours, along with nicotine patches and energy drinks.
One young banker that was interviewed openly admits that he uses Adderall to help him cope with 22 hour days…
Jonah Frey, a former investment banker for Wells Fargo in San Francisco, said one colleague would snort lines of crushed Adderall pills at his desk and that “nobody blinked an eye”.
Mr Frey told the Wall Street Journal he began taking the drug in 2020 because his colleagues told him it would help with the long hours, frequently pushing through from 4am until calls with the East Coast office at 2am the next day.
They are so busy making money on Wall Street that some workers hardly get any sleep at all.
But at the same time economic suffering is spreading like wildfire in communities all over the nation.
If our economic pain is this bad while the party on Wall Street is still raging, what is our country going to look like once the party on Wall Street finally ends?
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